White Shadows in the South Seas Part 29

I asked him if I might relieve him of tiller and sheet, and he, with an injunction to keep the sail full and far, unpocketed his breviary, and was instantly absorbed in its contents.

Our tack was toward the eastern distance, and no glimpse of land or cloud made us aught but solitary travelers in illimitable s.p.a.ce. The sun was beneath the deep, but in the hush of the pale light one felt the awe of its coming. Slowly a faint glow began to gild a line that circled the farthest east. Gold it was at first, like a segment of a marriage ring, then a bolt of copper shot from the level waters to the zenith and a thousand vivid colors were emptied upon the sky and the sea. Roses were strewn on the glowing waste, rose and gold and purple curtained the horizon, and suddenly, without warning, abrupt as lightning, the sun beamed hot above the edge of the world.

The Marquesans stirred, their bodies stretched and their lungs expanded in the throes of returning consciousness. Then one sat up and called loudly, "_A t.i.tahi a atu!_ Another day!" The others rose, and immediately began to uncover the _popoi_ bowl. They had canned fish and bread, too, and ate steadily, without a word, for ten minutes. The steersman, who had joined them, returned to the helm, and the priest and I enjoyed the bananas and canned beef with water from the jug, and cigarettes.

All day the _Jeanne d'Arc_ held steadily on the several tacks we steered, and all day no living thing but bird or fish disturbed the loneliness of the great empty sea. Pere Victorien read his breviary or told his beads in abstracted contemplation, and I, lying on the bottom of the boat with my hat shielding my eyes from the beating rays of the sun, pondered on what I knew of Tai-o-hae, the port on the island of Nuka-hiva, to which we were bound.

For two hundred years after the discovery of the southern group--the islands we had left behind us--the northern group was still unknown to the world. Captain Ingraham, of Boston, found Nuka-hiva in 1791, and called the seven small islets the Washington Islands. Twenty years later, during the war of 1812, Porter refitted his ships there to prey upon the British, and but for the perfidy,--or, from another view, the patriotism,--of an Englishman in his command, Porter might have succeeded in making the Marquesas American possessions.

Tai-o-hae became the seat of power of the whites in the islands; it waxed in importance, saw admirals, governors, and bishops sitting in state on the broad verandas of government buildings, witnessed that new thing, the making of a king and queen, knew the stolid march of convicts, white and brown, images of saints carried in processions, and schools opened to regenerate the race of idol-worshippers.

Tai-o-hae saw all the plans of grandeur wane, saw saloons and opium, vice and disease, fastened upon the natives, and saw the converted, the old G.o.ds overthrown, the new G.o.d reigning, cut down like trees when the fire runs wild in the forest.

The dream of minting the strength and happiness of the giant men of the islands into gold for the white labor-kings dissolved into a nightmare as the giants perished. It was hard to make the free peoples toil as slaves for foreign masters, so the foreign masters brought opium. To get this "Cause of Wonder Sleep," of more delight than _kava_, the Marquesan was taught to hoe and garner cotton, to gather copra and even to become the servant of the white man. The hopes of the invaders were rosy. They faded quickly. The Marquesans faded faster. The saloons of Tai-o-hae were gutters of drunkenness.

The _paepaes_ were wailing-places for the dead. No government arrested vice or stopped the traffic in death-dealing drugs until too late. Then, with no people left to exploit, the colonial ministers in Paris forgot the Marquesas.

In the lifetime of a man, Tai-o-hae swelled from a simple native village with thousands of healthy, happy people, to the capital of an archipelago, with warships, troops, prisons, churches, schools, and plantations, and reverted to a deserted, melancholy beach, with decaying, uninhabited buildings testifying to catastrophe. Since Kahuiti, my man-eating friend of Taaoa, was born, the cycle had been completed.

I was on my way now to see, in Tai-o-hae, a man who was giving his life to bring the white man's religion to the few dying natives who remained.

At dusk the wind died, and we put out the oars. Hour after hour the rowers pulled, chanting at times ancient lays of the war-canoes, of the fierce fights of their fathers when hundreds fed the sharks after the destruction of their vessels by the conquerors, and of the old G.o.ds who had reigned before the white men came. Pere Victorien listened musingly.

"They should be singing of the Blessed Mother or of Joan," he said with sorrow. "But when they pull so well I cannot deny them a thread of that old pagan warp. Those devils whom they once worshipped wait about incessantly for a word of praise. They hate the idea that we are hurrying to the mission, and they would like well to delay us."

Whatever the desires of those devils, they were balked, for the wind came fair during the second night, and when the second dawning came we were in the bay of Tai-o-hae.

It was a basin of motionless green water, held in the curve of a sh.o.r.e shaped like a horseshoe, with two huge headlands of rock for the calks. The beach was a rim of white between the azure of the water and the dark green of the hills that rose steeply from it.

Above them the clouds hung in varying shapes, here lit by the sun to snowy fleece, there black and lowering. On the lower slopes a few houses peeped from the embowering _parau_ trees, and on a small hill, near the dismantled fort, the flag of France drooped above the gendarme's cabin.

By eight o'clock in the morning, when we reached the sh.o.r.e, the beach was shimmering in the sunlight, the sand gleaming under the intense rays as if reflecting the beams of gigantic mirrors.

Heat-waves quivered in the moist air.

This was the beach that had witnessed the strange career of John Howard, a Yankee sailor who had fled a Yankee ship fifty years before and made his bed for good and all in the Marquesas. Lying Bill Pincher had told me the story. Howard, known to the natives as T'yonny, had been welcomed by them in their generous way, and the _tahuna_ had decorated him from head to foot in the very highest style of the period. In a few years, what with this tattooing and with sunburn, one would have sworn him to be a Polynesian. He was ambitious, and by alliances acquired an entire valley, which he left to his son, T'yonny Junior. Mr. Howard, senior, garbed himself like the natives and was like them in many ways, but he retained a deep love for his country and its flag, and when he saw an American man-of-war entering the harbor, he went aboard with his many tawny relatives-in-law.

The captain was amazed to hear him talking with the sailors.

"'E was blooming well knocked off 'is pins," said Lying Bill.

"'Blow me!' 'e sez, 'if that blooming cannibal don't talk the King's English as if 'e was born in New York!' 'E 'ad 'im down in the cabin to 'ave a drink, thinking 'e was a big chief. 'Oward took a cigar and smoked it and drank 'is whiskey with a gulp and a wry face like all Americans.

"'I must say,' sez the captain, 'you're the most intelligent 'eathen I've seen in the 'ole blooming run.'

"'Eathen?' sez 'Oward. 'Me a 'eathen! I was born in Iowa, and I'm a blooming good American.'"

"'What, you an American citizen?' sez the captain. 'Born in my own state, and painted up like Sitting Bull on the warpath? Get off this ship,' sez 'e, wild, 'get off this ship, or I'll put you in irons and take you back to the blooming jail you escaped from!'

"'Oward leaped over the side and swum ash.o.r.e."

An avenue ran the length of the beach, shaded by trees, and crossing a gentle stream. Along this avenue was all the life and commerce of Tai-o-hae. Two traders' shops, empty offices, a gendarme, a handful of motley half-castes lounging under the trees--this was all that was left of former greatness. Only nature had not changed. It flung over the broken remnants of the glory and the dream its lovely cloak of verdure and of flower. Man had almost ceased to be a figure in the scene he had dominated for untold centuries.

Crossing the stepping-stones of the brook we met a darkish, stout man in overalls.

"Good morn'," he said pleasantly. I looked at him and guessed his name at once.

"Good-morning," I answered. "You are the son of T'yonny."

"My father, Mist' Howard, dead," he said. "You _Menike_ like him?"

Before I could answer something entered my ear and something my nose.

These somethings buzzed and bit fearsomely. I coughed and sputtered.

An old woman on the bank was sitting in the smudge of a fire of cocoanut husks. She was scratching her arms and legs, covered with angry red blotches.

"The _nonos_ never stop biting," she said in French. These _nonos_ are the dread sand-flies that Pere Victorien had run from to get some sleep in Atuona. They are a kind of gadfly, red-hot needles on wings.

We sauntered along the road, tormented by the buzzing pests at which we constantly slapped and, crossing a tiny bridge over the brook, approached the Mission of Tai-o-hae, that once pompous and powerful center of the diffusion of the faith throughout the Marquesas. The road was lined with guavas, mangos, cocoanuts, and tamarinds, all planted with precision and care. The ambitious fathers who had begun these plantings scores of years before had provided the choicest fruits for their table. All over the world the members of the great religious orders of Europe have carried the seeds of the best varieties of fruits and flowers, of trees and shrubs and vegetables; more than organized science they deserve the credit for introducing non-native species into all climes.

About the mission grounds was a stone wall, stout and fairly high, which had a.s.sured protection when orgies of indulgence in rum had made the natives brutal. The clergy must survive if souls are to be saved. Within the wall stood the church, the school, and a rambling rectory, all made beautiful by age and the artistry of tropical nature. Mosses and lichens, mosaics of many shades of green, faint touches of red and yellow mould, covered the old walls which were fast decaying and falling to pieces.

By the half-unhinged door stood an old man of venerable figure, his long beard still dark, though his hair was quite white. He wore a soiled soutane down to the ankles of his rusty shoes, a sweaty, stained, smothering gown of black broadcloth, which rose and fell with his hurried respiration. His eyes of deepest brown, large and l.u.s.trous, were the eyes of an old child, shining with simple enthusiasms and lit with a hundred memories of worthy accomplishments or efforts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pere Simeon Delmas' church at Tai-o-hae]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Gathering the _feis_ in the mountains]

Pere Victorien presented me, saying that I was a lover of the Marquesas, and specially interested in Joan of Arc. Pere Simeon seized me by the hand and, drawing me toward him, gave me the accolade as if I were a reunited brother. Then he presented me to a Marquesan man at his side, "_Le chef de l'isle de Huapu_," who was waiting to escort him to that island that he might say ma.s.s and hear confession. The chief was for leaving at once, and Pere Simeon lamented that he had no time in which to talk to me.

I said I had heard it bruited in my island of Hiva-oa that the celebration of the fete of Joan of Arc had been marked by extraordinary events indicating a special appreciation by the heavenly hosts.

Tears came into the eyes of the old priest. He dismissed the chief at once, and after saying farewell to Pere Victorien, who was embarking immediately for his own island of Haitheu, Pere Simeon and I entered his study, a pitifully shabby room where rickety furniture, quaking floor, tattered wall-coverings, and cracked plates and goblets spelled the story of the pa.s.sing of an inst.i.tution once possessing grandeur and force. Seated in the only two sound chairs, with wine and cigarettes before us, we took up the subject so dear to Pere Simeon's heart.

"I am glad if you cannot be a Frenchman that at least you are not an Englishman," he said fervently. "G.o.d has punished England for the murder of Jeanne d'Arc. That day at Rouen when they burned my beloved patroness ended England. Now the English are but merchants, and they have a heretical church.

"You should have seen the honors we paid the Maid here. _Mais, Monsieur_, she has done much for these islands. The natives love her.

She is a saint. She should be canonized. But the opposition will not down. There is reason to believe that the devil, Satan himself, or at least important aides of his, are laboring against the doing of justice to the Maid. She is powerful now, and doubtless has great influence with the Holy Virgin in Heaven, but as a true saint she would be invincible." The old priest's eyes shone with his faith.

"You do not doubt her miraculous intercession?" I asked.

Pere Simeon lit another cigarette, watered his wine, and lifted from a shelf a sheaf of pamphlets. They were hectographed, not printed from type, for he is the human printing-press of all this region, and all were in his clear and exquisite writing. He held them and referred to them as he went on.

"She was born five hundred years ago on the day of the procession in Tai-o-hae. That itself is a marvel. Such an anniversary occurs but twice in a millennium. After all my humble services in these islands that I should be permitted to be here on such a wonderful day proves to me the everlasting mercy of G.o.d. Here is the account I have written in Marquesan of her life, and here the record of the fete upon the anniversary."

As he showed me the brochures written beautifully in purple and red inks, recording the history of the Maid of Orleans, with many canticles in her praise, learned dissertations upon her career and holiness, maps showing her march and starred at Oleane, Kopiegne, and Rua to indicate that great things had occurred at Orleans, Compiegne, and Rouen, Pere Simeon pointed out to me that it was of supreme importance that the Marquesan people should be given a proper understanding of the historical and geographical conditions of England and France in Joan's time.

He had spent months, even years, in preparing for the celebration of her fete-day.

"And _Monsieur_, by the blessed grace of Joan, only the whites got drunk. Not a Marquesan was far gone in liquor throughout the three days of the feast. There was temptation in plenty, for though I gave only the chiefs and a few intimates any wine, several of the Europeans in their enthusiasm for our dear patroness distributed absinthe and rum to those who had the price. There was a moment when it seemed touch and go between the devil and Joan. But, oh, how she came to our rescue! I reproached the whites, locked up the rum, and Joan did the rest. It was a three-days' feast of innocence."

"But there are not many whites here?" I asked.